The present invention relates to a composite motion guide device, more precisely relates to a composite motion guide device for guiding movement of a drive shaft in the axial and rotational directions thereof.
There was disclosed an example of conventional composite motion guide devices in the U.S. Pat. No. 4,939,946, (Jul. 10, 1990, Inventor: H. Teramachi). This conventional device has a drive shaft having a sprial screw groove grooved on the outer circumferential face and a linear spline groove grooved thereon in the axial direction to cross the screw groove, a rotatable screw-rotor covering the drive shaft and screwing the screw groove thereon, a rotatable spline-rotor covering the drive shaft and engaging with the spline groove thereon, and two motors for respectively rotating the screw-rotor and the spline-rotor. The drive shaft can be moved in the axial and rotational directions thereof by selectively driving the motors.
The above stated device has enough function for moving the drive shaft, however, it has the following disadvantage. The device must have two motors for selectively rotating the two rotors. Therefore, the manufacturing cost are increased and the device becomes big and heavy.